New old house…

Perhaps you are one of the two people that read this blog that I don’t know on Facebook. Well, then you might not know that my husband and I bought a new house.

There we are, being adorable with an honest to God picket fence behind us and I put on makeup for the first time in two months, just for that picture. You’re welcome.

But it’s a little silly to call it a “new” house.

She was built in 1920, 1700 square feet of hard wood floors, obligatory fireplace, and be-still-my-heart every original window in operating condition. John knew I was a goner when I saw the windows. So she’s three years short of a century, and my hope is that before her hundredth birthday I will make her sing.

Alas, the school year has started so reno, moving, and all the fun things that go with it are shifted to evenings and weekends. And every day we occupy two spaces is another dollar lost. So we are in a hurry.

It was a long day at school but I wanted to get my hands dirty. John has been packing boxes, making me feel inadequate.

We are going to live through most of the reno on the new old house. (It’s like camping!) But one thing I really put my foot down about was restoring the wood floors upstairs that have been painted and carpeted. I know from experience that if you don’t do this before you put furniture on top, it will never ever get done. So this weekend we will rent the drum sander and start stripping. Anybody that wants to come throw dollar bills at me is welcome.

Between now and Friday night, I have to prep the floors, and that means ripping out the lovely carpet in the hall and on the stairs.

So I grabbed my pry bar and set to work. I’m mostly just interested in seeing what is underneath, since at closing the previous owner said they did carpet because they didn’t think the floor could be saved.

Carpet is usually tacked down on the edges on track strip and once you get it started it’s pretty easy to pull. It’s my bad luck that this awful runner was added later and is hardcore stapled through the carpet, but that’s what pry bars are for.

Groooosss. Glad it’s going in the trash.

Now before you freak out about the black stuff it’s not mold. It’s paper and glue from linoleum.

Back when everybody was obsessed with oil and oil products it was considered the cool thing to do to cover hardwood floors with linoleum. If you were super cool, you bought linoleum in a carpet pattern and glued it down like a carpet runner. Because the best kind of bad reno trend is one that mocks a previous bad reno trend!

All the glue will be annoying but not impossible to get off, I’ve done it before.